2024 Scarefest: Damien's maze ratings
Intro
Its coming to the end of the 2024 themepark season - but its not all doom and gloom. Its time for one of the theme park communities favorite events at Alton Towers: Scarefest. Full of delightful food and beverage trucks, live performance shows, night time rollercoaster rides and terrifying mazes, scarefest is always an absolute delight. This year, I focused my visit on the mazes, and now scarefest is coming to a close, im here today to share my personal opinions on each maze I did, and rate them in my opinions, so sit back, get cozy and lets dive right in ;)
and of course, ill say now, this review includes spoilers for the 6 main mazes!
6- Amigos in the afterlife
Starting off this list is the family friendly, new for 2024 maze based on the Mexican holiday Dia de Muertos - as we probably have heard it more as Day of the Dead. This colourful maze takes you through the gates into the afterlife where you meet various friendly characters who help you with safe passage through the streets and back to the land of the living (after completing some tasks for them).
Whilst this is lowest on my list, it is in no way a bad experience, just as a scare maze well... its not very scary. Of course this is a kid friendly attraction, so its not going to be full of creepy costumes and jumpscares, however I did find all of the characters a little bit samey after a while. Each character had the same up-beat friendly attitude, and it began to feel like a copy-paste just with different roles (the cook, the dancers, the guide, the musicians) and it struggled to hold my attention. The decorations and scent pods however were amazing, they were bright and colourful, and I really admired the use of UV. It felt like I had just walked onto the set of Disney's 'Coco' with the comedic characters and upbeat music and songs - shout out to the barry the worm song. Truly memeworthy in my opinion - and honestly, it was quite a relaxed and in places funny experience.
I would have to say the highlight of this one for me was the 'wrestling segment' - it might be because i watched the WWE documentary recently, but I found the characters here extremely charming, and it even squeezed a chuckle or two out of me watching this dressed up wrestler acting all tough and then getting 'beaten up' by a literal child.
I would say it was deffinately worth visiting this maze at least once, its a great earlier maze to go to if you are waiting for it to get darker to do the more adult ones, and its deffinately worth a go if you haave any children with you - you never know, you might fing yourself singing and dancing along!
5- Trick or treat town (with harribo)
Trick or treat town is the other family friendly maze that Alton towers ran this year, and similar to Amigos, its not very scary. I rated this maze higher however due to the larger variety on character personality...
In this maze, you are given a paper trick or treating bag, and sent into the maze where you meet the first character - a police man - who tells you that you should knock on the town resident's doors in a walk through trick or treating experience, before he asks you to knock on a creepy door with a 'do not enter' sign, reveals no one lived there and it was a prank, and then sends you on your way to complete the rest of the experience yourself.
Theres quite a variety of characters here, all still family friendly and upbeat, but they all have more defined personalities than those in the amigos maze. Theres exitable ones who are eager to open the doors and give you sweets, grumpy ones who reluctantly drop a bag of harribo into your buckets, and my personal favorite, the silly clown-like trickster, who callenges you to throw a ball into a bucket to get your sweets, only to tip the ball out infront of you, laugh and tell you to move on your way. I feel like the trick addition keeps the maze from getting boring, and the variety of characters are all interesting in their own ways to meet. The town decoration feels like you are in a creepy version of 'whoville' from the grinch, and to be honest, the characters have that vibe too. To top it off you exit the maze with a bag full of tasty harribo treats too! A delightfully delicious experience, that is enjoyable no matter your age - and honestly brought back a ton on nostalgia for me, showing at alton towers, you are never too old to go trick or treating.
4- The Attic
Returning from last year is the Attic. A ghostly story of the master of the mannor beating his lover to death after their children were pulled into a fireplace by the devil. I'll be honest, its a very stereotypical victorian style horror story, and a very safe play, with nothing that massively stands out. Its a pretty solid maze, theres scares and some decent effects (shout out to the fireplace section near the end) and it certainly isn't for kids. I would consider this maze the middleground of the whole lineup, its not majorly scary beyond the odd jumpscare, but its enough to have people squabbling over who goes in first.
Basic story aside, the actual themeing in the maze is really nice, you certainly forget you are in the towers, as the immersive decor really feels like an attic in a old house. The attention to details are lovely, even the small decorations in the bedroom area just bring the whole thing to life. The actors certainly also fit im, with the final section with the devil actually being pretty impressive, I wasn't even preparet to encounter him the first time I tried this maze last year. The maze twists and turns using the most of the small space it actually covers, even sneekily using the same doorway you enter through twice! The main downside about the layout of this maze is really the stairs - which in the location it is in is pretty unavoidable to be fair - however it makes this partucular experience innacessable to people with certain disabilities (and is a bit of a pain to clamber up and down in general)
Overall, I think The Attic is a solid maze, it has a easy to follow backstory, a detailed layout and nice themeing, it just lacks some of the indepth lore, unique features and bigger scares that the ones i rated higher include.
3- Altonville mine tours: Tiny's revenge
With a 80/90's esque slasher feel, Altonville mine tours is another of the returning mazes from previous years. This experience has been revamped in the last 2 years to 'Tiny's Revenge' and follows the story of 5 teens who went into the mines after the events of previous years stories of the skinsnatchers, and dissapeared. You are greeted by a very non-bothered seeming sheriff deputy, who explains that the dwellers in the mines are the likely suspects for the teens dissapearences, and says the place is actively under investigatio, but before he can explain anymore the lights flicker off. When the light returns, the deputy is dead and you are moved on into the maze by a shovel weilding dweller, and this is where the frights truly begin. This maze is pretty dark and hard to see in places, but this all adds to the frightening aspects. The actors of the dissapeared teenagers appear in cages, and its genuinely unnerving hearing them begging for help as you pass by. At some points there are manequins stood in the corners, but you can't quite tell in the light if it is a manequin, or if its an actor waiting to jump at you as you pass by. The themeing is grim and grizly, it truly feels like you are the main characters in a old slasher movie as you shimy past walls of gasmasks and wire fencing.
The decor in the maze is hard to take note of, partially due to the low lignt, partially because you dont get much time to look about between scares, but it certainly fits the vibe, with one section having a lowered ceiling in which you have to duck down to pass through, I have never been in a mine, but I think that I can confidently say that this is what I would expect a mine to be like (minus the creepy gas mask wearing murderers)
At the end of the maze you are jumped at by a dweller weilding a chainsaw, and even though you can see the rubber covering where the blade would be, the way he maniacally swings the machine about and chases you down really makes you question if he is going to hurt you. This is the maze I have seen the most people bolting out of the exit of, and you can hear the screams of chainsaw man's victims even at the entrance as you wait to go in. This maze is certainly not one for those with a low scare tolerance, and was actually my favorite one of last year. Even though I was expecting certain scares and parts of the maze it still got my hair standing on end this year too.
2- Daz Games: panic reloaded
Another returner, and collaboration with youtube gamer Daz Black, Daz Games: Panic reloaded is a reboot of last years escape room like maze. You are greeted by videos of Daz claiming they fixed the 'mishaps' of last year, before the antivirus he claims to have installed fails, and you enter the maze. I didn't actually manage to do this maze last year, but after all of the good things I had heard about it, I was really exited to give it a shot this time round, and my god, it did not dissapoint.
The technology in this maze is actually quite cool - its nothiing too over the top but it has a really unique feel, you scan in on your wristband and have to remember 2 symbols that are assigned when you set up your name, and when in the maze you have to remember, and find the two symbols, and scan them on the wristband to get out before the 6 minuets are up. The maze is fully free-roam, and you find youself going in circles trying to find the symbols, seemingly coming across every single one besides the one you actually want to find. To top the whole thing off, theres actors lurking arround every corner, flashing lights and difficult to navigate twists and turns... oh, and you are timed against everyone else, with a leaderboard display at the end.
This maze was genuinely fantastic, I thought a collaboration with a youtuber would be pretty bad, but panic reloaded goes to prove me wrong. Just when you think you have grasped the layout of the maze, you take a turn and totally forget where you are again. The costumes and makeup are phenominally terrifying, the music is suspenseful and you find yourself genuinely wanting to get a good spot on the leaderboard. This is really a maze I think that I could do again and again.
The decor in this maze isn't anything overly special, it feels like a labrynth of cattlepens in a shipping container, but literally every other aspect of the maze makes up for it. I really understand the hype this maze gained last year - and again this year. I really recomend if theres one maze you really have to experience, its Daz Games: Panic reloaded. The cherry on top too is that theres actually some pretty cool merch for this maze too, with its own little merch stall at the end. Theres only one maze that I really think rivaled this one, and it was such a struggle to choose between the two.
1- Compound
In the same year we got the beast herself back, we also got an entire scaremaze themed to the Nemesis lore. Compound is really not for the faint of heart, and I was even told by a staff member that one runthrough had her in tears! Compound is an immersive, and terrifying experience, as much as it is brilliantly themed, and fits right in with the lore of the much beloved Nemesis herself. You find yourself a test subject for the phalanx (really if you don't know who these fuckers are yet, where have you been?) and are put in containment - the scay part about this is if you are doing this maze with any friends or family, you are extremely likely to be split up, which is something I have never experienced at a scarefest before. You are shut in a small enclosure with likely complete strangers, before the systems fail and the doors open into a labrynth of horrors as you make your great escape.
The great thing about this maze is youll get a different experience depending on which containment unit you start in - my brother had a completely different time to me. This was also the only maze where I was really intimidated by one of the actors, getting shoved about and pushed ahead of the rest of my group so I was forced to wander through parts alone. I have never been so genuinely unsettled in a maze before, the costumes were amazing, and you really for a breif moment feel like a prisoner of the corrupt phalanx. Depending on what route you take, you might even find yourself suprised with some of the spawns of Nemesis!
The decoration in this maze is fantastic, and honestly the biggest reason I put it abbove Daz Games maze - It has everything. The lore, the scares, the themeing, its all fantastic. The actors are so convincing, and the whole experience leaves you wondering what the hell jus happened. Whilst this certainly isnt the longest maze of the lot, its the most terrifying and thrilling one, and once the initial shock wears off you want to go try again.
I may be a little biast as Nemesis is my #1, but this was just a fan-fucking-tastic experience. Compound stuck with me long after I had even left the park, and still gives me the creeps to think about now, days later. I really hope we get to see this one again next year, as its just such a thrilling experience, and links in so beautifully with our beloved Nemesis.
So there we have it! My ratings for this years scarefeast mazes. Do you agree with where I put them? Which was your favorite? Are there any themes you hope Alton Towers bring next year? Let me know in the comments!
And until next time my friends, stay safe, and don't get lost in any creepy mazes!
- Damien